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News & Events
Spotlight on Students
Student Spotlight
Educators for Social Justice: Advocates for Awareness, Understanding and Action at the COE
Who are we?
Educators for Social Justice is the most recent version of a College of Education student organization that has been in existence for over 10 years – first as Students Promoting Diversity and then as Educators Promoting Diversity. But over time the student membership of Educators Promoting Diversity dwindled down until it was almost non-existent. In the fall of 2004, several College of Education graduate students took on the task of revitalizing the group and organizing it in a way that its membership, mission, and goals would be sustained year after year.
What are our goals and mission?
Educators for Social Justice is a student group at the University of Washington-Seattle that advocates awareness, understanding, and action around issues of social justice within the College of Education, the field of education, and beyond.
Our goals are to: promote & advocate for multiculturalism throughout the UW College of Education, increase the ethnic & racial diversity of educators who work in common schools, colleges, & universities, and build a supportive, fun, & dynamic College of Education community.
Why did we change our name from "Educators Promoting Diversity" to "Educators for Social Justice?" Or rather, how do we conceptualize the terms of "diversity" and "social justice" in education?
The primary reason we switched our name from Educators Promoting Diversity to Educators for Social Justice is that we feel promoting diversity does not clearly articulate our group’s objectives. Diversity is a value neutral concept. Diversity signifies quantity—it does not highlight a normative impulse. And, when a normative impulse is highlighted, it is usually in a manner that is inattentive to the ideological and systemic structural conditions that marginalize and oppress.
For instance, while the language of diversity is used by numerous educational institutions to claim
engagement with social injustice (especially, but not limited to, racial inequality), the reality of most institutional policy is that engagement rarely extends beyond simply advocating increasing the number of under-represented populations. While we certainly advocate numerical diversity, our concerns are much deeper than numerical representation. We advocate engaging and eliminating systemic injustice. This means we must wrestle with ideology and think critically about social-relations. Promoting diversity is not a phrase that gets at this mission. Thus, we turned to a name that clearly advocates—the word "for"— and clearly advocates a value position—"social justice".
So, what is social justice? There is little question that social justice is a contested concept; it has ideological fluidity. We embrace this. Yet, while the language of social justice is broad enough to allow our group to engage in wide-ranging philosophical and political debates about the ends and means of social change, it is also narrow enough to place ourselves within a concrete conversation about social change that has, for many years, been occurring inside and outside the field of education. While ideologically fluid, the language of social justice is connected to intellectual traditions and social and political movements (both left and liberal) that struggle against racism, class inequality, gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and a host of other social ills. Social justice is not simply about increasing numbers so as to be diverse; social justice is about fighting oppressive ideas and institutions and creating substantive social change. We are for social justice. Thus, we changed our name.
How have we worked to promote diversity/actualize social justice within the College of Ed? And beyond?
During the 2004-2005 academic year our work culminated in a series of letters written to the College of Education Dean & faculty as well as to several faculty hiring committees as a means of raising awareness about our concerns. The "grievance" letter, addressed to the Dean and COE faculty, focused on concerns related to minority student representation, current advising and mentoring structures, and the overall climate and culture of the 
college and called for the administration and faculty to act in response to these concerns. Whereas the letters to the faculty hiring committees focused entirely on the need to further diversify the College of Education faculty by hiring more faculty of color. These letters have since activated deep discussion around these issues as well as sustained commitment and action from the College administration and faculty.
For the 2005-2006 year, we have focused on building a sense of community within the College of Education by hosting specific events and creating physical changes within Miller Hall. In collaboration with other campus units - Vince Schleitwiler, a graduate student from the English department & GO-MAP – we helped to host the Diversity Book Talk with Chinese-American author Peter Kwong on November 17th. We have also worked with the College of Education to host other community-building events like the COE Diversity Social, which was held on November 10th and brought together 40 graduate students for a night of good conversation and food at Araya’s Vegetarian Restaurant. Educators for Social Justice has also actively worked to change the climate and culture of the College through projects like the Miller Hall Mural Project and the creation of the new student lounge on the 2nd floor of Miller Hall.
How can other students (current COE grads, undergrads, prospective students), faculty, staff get involved?
We encourage those who are interested in Educators for Social Justice to attend a meeting and get acquainted with the range of issues that ESJ is currently involved in. Membership with voting privileges and meetings are always open to COE graduate students, we’ve recently revised our constitution to extend the invitation to attend the meetings to other undergraduate groups associated with education field (like Zesbaugh Scholars, FEDS, & SWEA). COE faculty and staff are invited to attend meetings by invitation only – please contact an ESJ member if you are interested in attending a meeting.
Contact info:
Please contact us via email at: e4sj@u.washington.edu for more information or visit our website. Interested students, faculty, and staff can also check out our information bulletin board on the south end of the 2nd floor hallway of Miller Hall for meeting dates, times, and locations. Educators for Social Justice will also have a website soon.
Photos (top to bottom): Photo of COE students at the Diversity Social on November 10th; Group Picture of Educators for Social Justice at a summer BBQ; Photo of Educators for Social Justice in front of one of the murals on the 2nd floor of Miller Hall
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